


in the swing of it

by TLvop



Category: American Ultra (2015)
Genre: Gen, New Partners, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-26
Updated: 2016-11-26
Packaged: 2018-09-02 10:08:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8663422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TLvop/pseuds/TLvop
Summary: Larson hasn't lost Howell, she's ... misplaced him.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [metaphasia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/metaphasia/gifts).



This is not Agent Phoebe Larson's first rodeo since becoming a fully operational field case manager.

It's her second.

"Damn it, Howell," she mutters. Another scan of the busy Disney World crowd fails to reveal him. They're on a practice assignment, because Howell's not even close to rodeo-ready. He's so not ready, he's supposed to stay within a 10 foot radius of her location at all times. Thirty minutes in, and he's already disappeared -- somewhere between the time a kid threw a foam football at her face and when she tossed it back.

Larson bites her lower lip, slowly releasing it as she thinks. Mike Howell is not a flight risk. If anything, he's too eager to please the agency, getting distracted in the middle of training by things he needs to research so he can be the "best at spying". Larson's not in charge of his training at Langley but, as his case manager (his _handler_ , as he calls her, delicately raising his eyebrows as he says it, overemphasizing to make her smile), she's read the reports. 

He carries a notebook and a pen, now. It makes life easier.

Regulation requires she wait in place for Howell to return, assuming he's not a flight risk. Or that she report his disappearance to the techs that have his probational tracking device on lock down. The former feels unsafe -- it's Disney World, but she's not dealing with a fully qualified agent -- and the latter is just admitting defeat. Phoebe doesn't do that. She'd have to lose, first.

Phoebe starts a counter-clockwise circuit around Tomorrowland, keeping an eye on potential things that would attract Howell's attention. Lasseter's set on exploiting the ability of the brain of subjects with ADHD to hyper-focus beyond what baseline humans can sustain. She wants to turn it on like a switch and turn it off again when it's no longer needed – but not a second before. That's what makes the WiseGuy program unique, that's its _strategic advantage_. The switch has... not been perfected. 

Buzz Lightyear. Perfect. She veers towards him, rounding her shoulders a bit to fit the awkward college student she's portraying, smiling hopefully as he turns towards her.

She starts: "Sorry, have you seen --?" and is intercepted by a hoard of school children. Perfect. 

She drops the smile, turns to see a kettle corn stand, and immediately sets course for it. There's a couple arguing as they walk who almost run into her, and she apologizes while keeping her hand wrapped around the phone in her pocket. This is prime pick-pocketing territory, and they've gone full civilian for this training mission. Glorified scavenger hunt. Whatever.

As she's watching the crowd it parts for a second, and she sees him. He's curled up awkwardly on a bench, writing in his notebook.

Larson smiles, before suppressing a curse as a stroller runs over her foot.

"Sorry, sorry," the stroller-pusher says, freezing in place.

"Yeah," she grits out, "sure," and moves past him.

Howell has a collection of other things on the bench: the Polaroid camera Pete dug out of a supply cabinet for them (the existence of which should be less of a surprise than it is, given how much tech from the 80s lives back there), an unopened bag of candied nuts, and an opened bag of caramel corn. He's slowly eating from the last item, as he contemplates the notebook in front of him.

"Hey," he says when she sits down, and looks over at her. He seems calm, almost unusually so, and Phoebe wonders what's gone wrong.

"Hey yourself," she says, finding it easy to be casual now that she knows where he is. "I lost track of you." 

He shrugs, closing his notebook on his finger, turning to face her completely. He does most things completely. "You were busy playing catch with that kid when I saw Buzz Lightyear, and we had to get a picture of him for the quest, and then I realized what are quests without sustenance? So I got sustenance. I know you like pralines." His voice suddenly drops, and he glances around pretty obviously before leaning in to her personal space, "I didn't have a wallet, because you have the credit card, so I took a wallet, but this guy has like five hundred and eighty dollars here, Phoebe. I only needed twenty! And then he'd left by the time I got that out, so I couldn't sneak it back into his pocket. So now I have a wallet with five hundred and sixty dollars and I don't know what to do with it so I decided to wait for you to come over here."

Technically, Phoebe has no real compunctions about just taking the rest of the money and ditching the wallet in the trash. Anyone who carries 600 dollars in an easily picked pocket is more than wealthy enough to placate her conscience. And they'd be saving the Wise Guy program from reimbursing them for things like: gas, and food, and hell – the tickets to Disney World. But... her gut tells her that won't go over so well, right now, with Howell. He's not even a real agent, yet. Cynicism takes time, for some people.

She puts her hand out. "I'll turn it in. People drop wallets all the time." He hands it over to her, relief written on his face. Phoebe hesitates. 

"I'll stay here," Howell says, before she can confirm. He smiles at her, a little awkwardly self-aware, and she smiles back. He opens his notebook back up.

"Hey, Mike," she says when she returns, and he looks back up. "What if I hadn't found you?"

He pulls a face at her. "It took you four minutes and twenty three seconds after I left to locate my position in the middle of... this," he waves a hand at the crowd. "You'd find me. And I know your phone number."

"Cool," she says, filing this away for later. "Do you want to hit Space Mountain?"

Mike grins, in the way he does sometimes where it starts slow and picks up speed, and you can pick out almost every micro-expression involved, and it's --

Phoebe breathes a bit of a laugh, and breaks eye contact, but she's grinning too.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to Searchingweasel for helping me trim out the unnecessary excess and find the right words (not their close cousins)!
> 
> Metaphasia -- Thank you so much for giving me the chance to write for this fandom! I had a lot of fun thinking about how Phoebe and Mike would act pre-canon, and I hope the decision to grab them right at the beginning of their time on the field together works for you :). It was such an interesting concept to me, given how deeply they know each other during canon.
> 
> I hope you've had a fantastic Yuletide, and have a seasonally appropriate hot/cold drink on me (depending on your hemisphere)!


End file.
